Title

Author

Date of Award

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

School of Computing

Committee Member

Dr. Ilya Safro, Committee Chair

Committee Member

Dr. Alexander Herzog

Committee Member

Dr. Kaylan Piratla

Abstract

The study of network representations of physical, biological, and social phenomena can help us better understand their structure and functional dynamics as well as formulate predictive models of these phenomena. However, in some applications there is a deficiency in real-world data-sets for research purposes due to such reasons as the data sensitivity and high costs for data retrieval. Research related to water distribution networks often relies on synthetic data because the real-world is data is not publicly available due to the sensitivity towards theft and misuse. An important characteristic of water distribution systems is that they can be embedded in a plane, therefore to simulate these system we need realistic networks which are also planar. Currently available synthetic network generators can generate networks that exhibit realism but the planarity is not guaranteed. On the other hand, existing water network generators do not guarantee similarity with the input network and do not scale. In this thesis, we present a flexible method to generate realistic water distribution networks with optimized network parameters such as pipe and tank diameters, tank minimum and maximum levels, and pump sizes. Our model consists of three stages. First, we generate a realistic planar graph from a known water network using the multi-scale randomized edit- ing. Next, we add physical water network characteristics such as pumps, pipes, tanks, and reservoirs to the obtained topology to generate a realistic synthetic water distribution system that can be used for simulation. Finally, we optimize the operational parameters using EPANet simulation tool and multi-objective optimization solver to generate a network with maximum resilience and minimum cost.